BONHAM´S AUCTION:AN ANTORIA ACOUSTIC GUITAR USED BY The QUARRYMEN, 1950s,WITH A LETTER FROM PAUL

12 Dec 2012 12:00 GMT London, Knightsbridg Entertainment Memorabilia

The Quarry Men/ Paul McCartney: An Antoria acoustic guitar used by The Quarry Men, 1950s, with a letter from Paul McCartney,

the guitar with natural finish, bound body with two f-holes, black scratchplate, trapeze tailpiece, fingerboard with dot markers, together with a signed, typewritten letter from Paul McCartney on personalised stationery, dated 28 June 2012, stating I well remember the parties at my Auntie Jin's house where we would often bring our guitars and play. Dennis would often join in and on the occasions when we forgot to bring our own guitars, Dennis would kindly lend us his to play on, accompanied by further background details

Estimate:

£20,000 - 25,000
€25,000 - 31,000
US$ 32,000 - 40,000

Footnotes

• On 23rd August 1984 the Daily Express newspaper featured a story about the identity of the fourth man in Mike McCartney's now-iconic colour photograph of John, Paul and George, circa 1958, reproduced here by kind permission of the photographer. The week following the article, the paper was able to name the bespectacled man holding a glass of beer as Dennis Littler. He was the best friend of Ian Harris, whose mother was the McCartney's Aunt Ginny (immortalised in Paul's song, Let 'Em In).
  
  Dennis had his own group at the time and recalled those days in the Daily Express article: '...When Paul, John and George started rehearsing their own group at Aunty Ginny's they actually looked up to us...They even pleaded to join us. We turned them down flat-too young and too inexperienced. They were all still at school. We were slightly older, we had been going longer than them...they all wanted to take it in turn to borrow my guitar. John had paid 30 bob (£1.50) for his battered guitar. Mine had cost £19 on hire purchase, which in those days was a fortune. In three weeks, Paul was playing better than I could ever hope to. It didn't make any difference to him that he was left-handed and my guitar was not. He could play anything. After a few spins of Little Richard's Long Tall Sally record he could knock out the right chords on the piano and make it sound right...'